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Case of "Comfort Women"
Re-framing the Narrative of "Comfort Women" Overview of "Comfort Women" ❖ Reports indicate 80,000-200,000 women and girls were forcibly conscripted into sexual slavery by Japanese Imperial Army from 1932 to 1945. ❖ Majority of the women and girls were taken from Korea, but many were also from China, the Philippines, Australia, and the Dutch East Indies. ❖ For nearly five decades, this war-time atrocity was a "forgotten and dark war-time past and crime" until former Korean comfort woman Kim Hak-sun ("Grandma Kim") publicly revealed her horrendous experience in August 1991 at the offices of Korean Church Women United (Christian NGO). ❖ Other victims followed “Grandma Kim’s” footsteps and publicly revealed their stories. Some also filed a lawsuit in Tokyo district court against the Japanese government for “crimes against humanity” in December 1991 and April 1992. ❖ Former comfort women have cited “shame,” “disgrace,” and “dishonor” as main reasons for silencing the atrocities they had to endure. "Comfort Women" Timeline: From Domestic to Global Edit ❖ Late 1980s: Korean religious and secular human rights NGOs spearhead public discourse of “comfort women” issue at the International Conference on Women and Tourism (hosted by Korean Church Women United) ❖ August 1991: Grandma Kim publicly shares her testimony of being a former "comfort woman" and surviving years of war-time sexual slavery under the Japanese Imperial Army ❖ February 1992: Comfort women issue raised at United Nations Commission on Human Rights ❖ 1995-2007: Japanese government creates Asian Women’s Fund to give monetary compensation and health and welfare benefits to the "victims" of war-time atrocities, yet receives international criticism for simply upholding "moral" responsibility and not "legal" actions to prosecute those who participated in the war-time sexual slavery acts ❖ February 6, 1996: The UN officially condemns Japan for sexual slavery ❖ Today: Japanese government continues to deny “forcible sexual slavery” and argues all “compensation” have already made during South Korea-Japan 1965 Normalization Treaty and through Asian Women's Fund. However, the victims ask Japanese government to offer "sincere, earnest apology" and public acknowledgement of past wrongdoings "Comfort Women" Issue: The Role of International Communication/Media Edit Handful of comfort women victims and their supporters started weekly Wednesday protests in front of Japanese Embassy in Seoul in January 1992. This weekly gathering is still continuing today, and the number of protesters have drastically multiplied over the years. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individual and NGO supporters (both domestic and foreign) attend the weekly protests in hopes to bring justice to the aging women who have endured unspeakable physical, emotional, and psychological pain and turmoil. With South Korea as an emerging East Asian nation-state and gaining influence and prominence in the international arena, coupled with the "comfort women" issue being introduced to the global community as a serious women's rights violation, various foreign media--CNN, BBC, NBC, Reuters, AP, etc.--picked up on this issue and started to record and publish the stories of the comfort women. Prominent international NGOs such as the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also played their parts in forming further narratives of the "comfort women" by actively and directly participating via creating reports and distributing testimonies of former comfort women to raise worldwide awareness of this war-time crime. In today's Information Age, more and more individual and civic groups are becoming proactive actors in domestic and international levels as they work to write their own stories, narratives, and disseminate these to incite debate and discussion about women's international human rights. With diversified multimedia tools and ever-increasing interconnectivity of the Internet, international, governmental, individual, and private actors have contributed to bring this once "domestic" (largely South Korean) issue into an international one.